 /*******************************************************************************
  * Copyright (c) 2000, 2006 IBM Corporation and others.
  * All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials
  * are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0
  * which accompanies this distribution, and is available at
  * http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
  *
  * Contributors:
  * IBM Corporation - initial API and implementation
  *******************************************************************************/
 package org.eclipse.update.core;

 import java.net.URL ;

 import org.eclipse.core.runtime.CoreException;
 import org.eclipse.core.runtime.IProgressMonitor;

 /**
  * Feature factory interface.
  * A feature factory is used to construct new instances of concrete
  * features.
  * <p>
  * Clients may implement this interface. However, in most cases clients should
  * directly instantiate or subclass the provided implementation of this
  * interface.
  * </p>
  * <p>
  * <b>Note:</b> This class/interface is part of an interim API that is still under development and expected to
  * change significantly before reaching stability. It is being made available at this early stage to solicit feedback
  * from pioneering adopters on the understanding that any code that uses this API will almost certainly be broken
  * (repeatedly) as the API evolves.
  * </p>
  * @see org.eclipse.update.core.BaseFeatureFactory
  * @since 2.0
  */
 public interface IFeatureFactory {

     /**
      * Returns a feature defined by the supplied URL. The feature
      * is associated with the specified site.
      * <p>
      * The actual interpretation of the URL is feature-type specific.
      * In most cases the URL will point to some feature-specific
      * file that can be used (directly or indirectly) to construct
      * the feature object.
      * </p>
      * @param url URL interpreted by the feature
      * @param site site to be associated with the feature
      * @return concrete feature object
      * @exception CoreException
      * @deprecated use createFeature(URL, ISite, IProgressMonitor) instead
      * @since 2.0
      */
     public IFeature createFeature(URL url, ISite site) throws CoreException;
     
     /**
      * Returns a feature defined by the supplied URL. The feature
      * is associated with the specified site.
      * <p>
      * The actual interpretation of the URL is feature-type specific.
      * In most cases the URL will point to some feature-specific
      * file that can be used (directly or indirectly) to construct
      * the feature object.
      * </p>
      * @param url URL interpreted by the feature
      * @param site site to be associated with the feature
      * @return concrete feature object
      * @exception CoreException
      * @since 2.1
      */
     public IFeature createFeature(URL url, ISite site, IProgressMonitor monitor) throws CoreException;
 }

